Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A sad day in local music history

Sleater Kinney is going on "indefinite hiatus"? What? Huh? Why?

I guess the news broke yesterday and the band hasn't given an official reason. Their tour dates this summer are likely to be their last. While it hasn't been announced yet, they're planning one final show in Portland with the date TBA.

While I have all of their albums post Dig Me Out, I've always been one of those people that could never get their name right. The spelling on "Sleater" always threw me off. No matter how many times I was corrected, I always pronounced that first bit "Slay-ter."

I saw them play a show at the Crystal Ballroom right around Xmas 2003. The all-ages section was clogged with a few hundred adoring teeny-boppers. I'm still amazed that they never hit the big time. In a better world, every American girl would have spent the late '90s/early '00s obsessing over Sleater Kinney instead of 'N Sync or Britney Spears' endless yokel pratfalls.

Sadly, the band never even received serious radio airplay here in Portland. Everyone at KNRK? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Your continued efforts to prove that things really *aren't* "different here" continue unabated. While many listeners could never make it past Corin Tucker's wails but at least some found them preferable to Christiana Aguilera's. Or Beyonce's. Or Trent Reznor's. Or a good portion of all the solo artists or lead singers ever recorded. As good as those last few albums were, Dig Me Out is still my personal favorite.

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In other Portland-affiliated band news, Modest Mouse cancelled their August show at Edgefield earlier this week. A damn shame but the good news is that they did it in order to continue recording their next album in the far away land of Mississippi. More details, along with a creepy animation, can be found here.